It takes courage to live as a Christian in America in the 21st-century. I know that many of you are going to stop reading right now. Christians are not being killed in America like we are in so many other parts of the globe. We don’t even face imprisonment here in the United States of America. Yes, some people have had to face economic consequences for standing by their Christian convictions, but by and large, there is very little oppression of Christianity in the United States.

If that was what I was talking about, you would be right. The United States is not currently a place where you are going to lose your life for being a Christian.

However, Christianity takes courage in the United States because of the cultural climate we find ourselves in. I have a few reasons for believing this, and I will lay those out sequentially for you.

First, consider what it means to be a Christian. You are putting your faith in the fact that Jesus Christ, God in human form, died and rose again. Not only that, but after He came back to life, He ascended into heaven. Not only that, but we trust our Bibles. Our Bibles are full of things that are pretty incredible as well. Think about it. The Israelites were led by a pillar of fire, and they still rejected God. I don’t know what is harder to believe: the fact that there was a pillar of fire miraculously leading them or the fact that they could be so stubborn and ignore such an obvious signal of divine presence. Not only that, but we believe in God creating the universe out of nothing.

Affirming these truths seems crazy especially in our hyper-rationalistic age. Affirming Christianity means staring that culture in the face and saying that we don’t buy into the assumptions of philosophical naturalism. We reject the prevailing worldview of American culture. It takes courage to go against the grain. Naturally, we have reasons for what we believe, and they are perfectly valid reasons, but not everyone is going to see it that way. This is not a call to anti-intellectualism, but it is rather a call to the recognition that there are people who are going to think we are ridiculous for believing what we believe despite all the evidence we might provide to support our position. Because we are going against the culture, it takes courage to have some people call us crazy no matter how much proof we provide.

As a brief side note on this topic before we continue, I think this is a particular temptation for people who tend to be proud of what they know. For people who have built their reputation on being one of the smartest people in the room, it can be hard to admit that they believe something that is going to make people think they are false. Of course, we understand that, as Christians, we are called to be fools for Christ, but that can be a difficult challenge for some of us. If we have built a reputation on how smart other people think we are, we have to be willing to give that up if necessary. We never give up our pursuit of truth, but some people will not support us when we follow the path to the cross.

Secondly, Christianity takes courage in our culture because so many people simply do not understand what it means or think that they are with us when they are not. The 2018 version of The State of Theology survey came out recently. 78% of Christians somewhat or strongly believe that Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God. That’s a little problematic unless you don’t mind heresy. 32% of evangelicals say that their beliefs are not objectively true. You can imagine how someone like the apostle Paul would respond to one third of evangelicals. 53% of evangelicals would somewhat or strongly agree with the statement that everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature. I’m not a huge fan of the wording of this statement, but it is potentially problematic if this belief in the goodness of humanity extends to not requiring salvation from Jesus Christ. The survey didn’t press further on this point as far as I can tell, but you can see how this could be a big problem.

You wonder why I bring this up and why it takes courage to be a Christian in this kind of culture where even Christians have erroneous theological views that are at odds with two millennia of Christian tradition. Sometimes it is harder to stand up to those who think they are on our side. It is really easy for me to stand up to Planned Parenthood and say that abortion is wrong. They don’t pretend to agree with me, and I don’t think that they are on the same page as I am. Therefore, we both realize we are bound to collide. While it may not always be the most pleasant, it is not surprising.

Personally, I find it harder when we have people who say they are Christians, but their theology really makes you wonder if they actually are. I’m not here to judge them. That is between them and God. However, when they hold positions that are contrary to the Biblical testimony, they need to be brought back into orthodoxy. They need to be brought back into a true understanding of God. There would be very few things worse than facing God on judgment day, thinking that you had been following Him your entire life and realizing that He never knew you. That truly is a wasted life, thinking that you were doing everything right to find your way to eternal security and being incorrect the entire time.

These discussions are naturally very hard to have because they believe that they are truly following God, and I truly believe that I am following God. In some ways, we are on the same team, but in other ways, we are entirely separated. It is an entirely different conversation than the one that I have with someone at Planned Parenthood. It takes courage to talk to those within our own camp to help bring them back to a right understanding.

It is difficult to criticize members of our own camp, and it takes courage to counterintuitively show them love by pointing out where they are falling out. It may not seem kind or loving, but we have to step up and take on that challenge. After all, it matters. These kinds of things are not little tangents of the Christian faith. We need to stand firm for Christianity, and doing it with those people who believe they are actually aligned with us takes a great deal of strength and courage.

Third, I think that the most powerful tactic that Satan uses against us is the belief that we are isolated. The whole country is falling apart, and no one is really a Christian anymore. We are all alone, and there is no one who can help us.

Of course that is blatantly false. We are never alone as long as God is with us, but we are also never humanly alone, especially in the United States today. We believe we are isolated, and we are told that Christianity is some kind of relic of our national past, but that is entirely false. However, the reason that we believe we are isolated is because we often times do not speak out. We are not public with our Christianity, so that person who sits beside you at the office or the other parent at your child’s football practice might be a Christian just like you, but you would never know it.

There is a story that I know I heard through my church at one point, and I don’t know if it is true or not, but it talks about a lady who was a member at a relatively large church. It was at least large enough that she didn’t know everyone who attended there on a regular basis since they had multiple services and a large auditorium. She heard there was a community supper, and she thought that she should invite the lady who sat beside her in the office to that dinner. She had never really spoken to her about her Christian faith before, but she thought this may be a good opportunity.

She went to the office the next day and was really nervous about invading her friend. Of course we are all afraid of rejection or ridicule as I mentioned above. However, when she told her coworker, her coworker laughed. Our lady was a little bit confused, but her coworker explained that she had been convicted to invite her to that same dinner and was just as afraid to ask her.

Obviously, the story has a happy ending, and, like I said, I don’t know if it is true or not. However, the kind of sad part about this story is that these two ladies worked beside each other, and neither one knew that the other one was a Christian or even that they attended the same church. Thinking that we spend 40 hours every week with our coworkers, it is at least humbling to me to wonder if many of them know that I am Christian. Facebook makes that much more obvious if they see what I post, but it does worry me to think about how few of my coworkers I have ever shared the Gospel with. I could be just like one of the women in that story. My coworkers might believe they are isolated. I might have more Christian coworkers than I think, but if we are all quiet about it, we will think that we are the only ones there who follow Jesus Christ. Those ladies thought they were isolated, but they were not in actuality. I think that Satan is very happy to keep this feeling that way. Therefore, it takes a great deal of courage to speak up. We get the benefit of feeling that God is with us when we step out in faith, but we also get to encourage someone else who may be feeling like they are the only question left in their office, on the sports team or in town even.

It is not easy to be a Christian in America. I realize our lives are not in danger, and I do not write this to minimize the experience of Christians around the world who face that kind of persecution. I am grateful that I do not have to face those potential consequences in my life right now. However, that does not mean that being a Christian is easy in America either, and the challenges we face, while not lethal, I still plenty strong enough to cripple us and make us ineffective for the cause of Jesus Christ. We can be afraid of ridicule, awkward conversations and isolation. Those are all very real things, and they are barriers that can really bring us down. We need to face them with courage and charge them head-on. Until we do that, we are not going to do all that God would have us to do.

His point, supplemented by an intertwined interview with theologian Brian McLaren, is that he believes Christianity has strayed so far from the original message of Jesus Christ that perhaps Jesus would not even identify with the movement He began. He makes the same claim about other religions as well to be fair, but he spends most of the article focusing on Christianity.

He makes the argument that it is clear that young people are leaving the church and becoming religious “nones.” He then moves on to say that in this seems to be “accompanied by a decline in public interest in doctrine.”

Therefore, the way to solve the problem according to McLaren is to modify what Christianity fundamentally is.

“Could Christians migrate from defining their faith as a system of beliefs to expressing it as a loving way of life?”

Christians ought to be loving people, so he has no argument from me on that point. We ought to follow the teachings of Jesus that tell us to love our neighbors and care for those who need it.

The problem with this statement and line of thought is that Christianity is inherently a system of beliefs. There’s no way around that. Even saying that Christianity is a loving way of life is defining a system of beliefs. Every worldview is based on certain presuppositions.

In that case, it is not really a question of whether or not Christianity or any religion has a system of beliefs but rather what that system of beliefs is based upon. How firm a foundation does that worldview have, and does it hold up to scrutiny?

Clearly, through this article, McLaren and by extension Kristof don’t believe that the historically accepted doctrines of Christianity hold up to that scrutiny.

“McLaren advises worrying less about whether biblical miracles are literally true and thinking more about their meaning.”

Turning the Bible into a metaphor has incredibly dangerous consequences, and the apostle Paul realized that within a few years of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. He understood that Christianity relies on the literal reality of at least one miracle, and he wrote about that in his first letter to the Corinthians.

“Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15-12:14, ESV).

I wrote the other day about what I termed “quirky Christianity.” Christianity undoubtedly challenges modern sensibilities. In a world full of anti-supernatural biases, the existence of even one miracle is incomprehensible. In a system without the supernatural, there necessarily cannot be any type of miraculous intervention.

However, that in and of itself is a presupposition. Therefore, Christianity is not going to be saved by stripping away its system of beliefs. No worldview can exist without a system of beliefs because they all have them by definition.

Rather, we need to evaluate how solid the foundation is. Did Jesus Christ literally die and literally rise from the dead? If that actually did happen, Christianity has a solid foundation, and the advice given by Kristof and McLaren is misplaced. Rather than abandon Christianity’s set of beliefs, the truth of the resurrection should cause us to embrace it.

If Jesus Christ did not die and rise again, then I don’t know that I would follow the advice of Kristof and McLaren either. Christianity has no use without the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is no better than a fairytale in that case. Rather than modify a false belief system, we might as well move on to find out that which is true.

Let’s never settle for a watered-down Christianity out of convenience. We either believe it, or we do not.

I suggested on Wednesday that Christians should not be afraid of, and even encourage, creativity and innovation in our outreach methods, but the Gospel truth is something that we cannot change to fit the whims of society.

That is going to make us look a little bit strange. Christianity is going to be quirky by the world’s standards. We might do things that other people simply don’t understand. When our society is saying that there is no such thing as absolute truth, we are going to seem very odd when we say that there is an all-powerful God who is Truth.

When the belief in the supernatural is seen as nothing more than childlike superstition, we are bold enough to say that our faith necessarily depends on the historical fact that Jesus Christ, who was fully God and fully man, was actually crucified, died and rose again through the supernatural power of God.

We are not talking about The Walking Dead here; we’re talking about the One who was dead walking alive again.

That is the fascinating part of the Christian worldview. On one hand, it is a perfectly logical and rational system, but some of the realities that Christians understand are seen as foolishness by the world around us.

Therefore, we need to embrace our inner Jesus freak (cue music). Because we will not change the gospel to fit the culture, there will be inevitable tension. There will be times when the world around us moves in one direction, and we’re going to stand firm where we have always stood.

“The real thing is wild, and weird; it is not a set of ideas, but a way of life. There will always be some people — young, middle-aged, and old — haunted by the sense that there is something else there, a longing that cannot be anesthetized away. If the church stands true to itself, and doesn’t apologize for itself, then they will come.”

It simply will not make sense to certain people because it is a way of life that is often times at odds with the world around us. Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised as Jesus promised in Matthew 10 that the world would not be kind to those who would sincerely follow Him. However, we want Jesus to be wrong. We want to believe that our culture will just open up and embrace our Christian beliefs.

As we have seen throughout history, the world has a way of rejecting the truth.

Russell Moore has continually made the same point in his writings. In an article he published on his website entitled “Is Christianity Dying?” he said the following:

“Christianity isn’t normal anymore, and that’s good news. The Book of Acts, like the Gospels before it, shows us that the Christianity thrives when it is, as Kierkegaard put it, a sign of contradiction. Only a strange gospel can differentiate itself from the worlds we construct. But the strange, freakish, foolish old gospel is what God uses to save people and to resurrect churches (1 Cor. 1:20-22).”

The gospel is nonnegotiable. We cannot begin to modify it to make it more socially acceptable. The minute we do that, we start to create heresy. Our methods might certainly look different in different times. I have even heard about churches establishing PokeStops on the premises as a way of attracting people who are playing Pokémon Go. That kind of creativity can work out well and might be an interesting outreach opportunity. I’m not opposed to that kind of innovation whatsoever and encouraged that Wednesday.

However, we do not innovate the gospel to make it more appealing. The gospel is what the gospel is. It is truth, and as we have looked at today, it might seem strange to modern sensibilities. However, that is where we are going to stand.

Author Amanda Hess wrote about the problems of trying to bring back what millennials want to see on TV in a format that might not apply to them anymore.

It got me thinking about the Christian implications of falling in love with the methods of the past. Is there anything that we lose when we try to force the present into the mold of the past?

On one hand, Christians value history more than many other people in the world. Our holy Scriptures are also history. We care about what literally happened to King David while he was ruling the nation of Israel. We care that Jesus Christ literally died and rose from the dead at a certain point in history. We care that the apostle Paul actually traveled all over the Middle East establishing churches almost 2000 years ago.

We are undoubtedly a people who not only care about history but also learn from history.

Christians have made mistakes, and we learn from them. We have similarly, through the power of God, seen many great things happen. Hospitals and universities have been founded by Christians. Christians like William Wilberforce have influenced national policy to change the world for the better. We can use that example to learn from and perhaps replicate in the future.

The question is not whether history is valuable because it certainly is for Christians. The question actually comes back to whether or not trying to replicate history can hinder us from doing great things in the present.

To use the language from Hess’ article, there is no doubt that many millennials enjoyed watching MTV while growing up. By having this new classic channel, these people have a way to go back and watch and shows that made them laugh when they were teenagers. Although MTV is not my network of choice, I certainly understand that we all can be nostalgic. Nostalgia in and of itself is not a bad thing.

However, MTV is a business that could have invested those resources into creating something new. Rather than simply live off past successes, why not invest those resources into creation rather than replication? Nothing great will ever rise again by simply showing the same shows over and over again. Eventually, millennials are going to get tired of watching reruns, and without any new content, this network is going to inevitably decline. Nostalgia does not attract new viewers; it holds onto those who want to remember the way TV was.

I think about this issue from a Christian perspective then. I’m certainly not saying that we ought to change the gospel to fit the times. Trust me, I’m not promoting heresy by any means. Truth remains Truth today, and it will be the Truth forever. This is not commentary on doctrine.

What I am saying however is if I want to reach people today, I am probably not going to start a crusade like Billy Graham. That was a tremendously successful approach in the time period where large events were the way to reach thousands of people. I am grateful for the work that Billy Graham was able to do, and he understood his culture at his time. He knew that these events would impact people.

Therefore, I do need to be like Billy Graham and understand what will reach people today just like he did in his ministry. However, that doesn’t mean my ministry needs to exactly mirror what he did. Just like the reruns of old TV shows will not appeal to a modern audience once the nostalgic millennials are done with them, recycling things that worked in the past will not necessarily work today. It might, but it very well might not, and we cannot simply be married to the methods of the past because they worked in the past.

I would propose that we try to create in the situation we find ourselves in. When there are great things that happened in the past, we learn from them, and we value the work of those who have gone before. We can perhaps replicate some things that are still relevant and can impact society today. However, we need to make sure that we don’t become too enamored with nostalgia that we don’t invest any resources in creating things for the present when they are sorely needed. The gospel will always remain the same, but we need to make sure we communicate effectively in 2016 in ways people today actually understand.

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